


Making a Nest

by apollonious



Category: How to Train Your Dragon (Movies)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Light Angst, Platonic Cuddling, Sleepy Cuddles, it's mostly just a found family recovering fic, more of a character study than anything else, not entirely Stoick friendly, there are vague suggestions of a plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-14
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-22 04:41:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30033213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apollonious/pseuds/apollonious
Summary: It starts out simply, with Astrid wrapping a blanket around Hiccup's shoulders.It ends up as something that will get not just them, but also Valka and Eret, through winters, loneliness, and loss.
Relationships: Astrid Hofferson & Valka, Eret & Astrid Hofferson, Eret & Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III, Eret/Valka (How to Train Your Dragon), Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III & Valka, Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III/Astrid Hofferson
Comments: 3
Kudos: 12





	Making a Nest

It starts off simply enough, with Astrid wrapping a blanket around Hiccup’s shoulders. He’s fallen asleep in the hangar again, at one of the little desks he has in here for work that really can’t wait for him to go back to his house or his workshop in the forge. On this particular night, he’s slumped over the journal he keeps their map in, though he did at least manage to fold it up and tuck it away, to prevent it from getting drooled on in his sleep. Toothless is curled up next to his desk. He’d popped his head up at her approach, and now he rests it atop his front claws again with a snort.

One of the candles Hiccup was working by has guttered out, and Astrid blows out the rest one by one. As she’s stepping back, Hiccup stirs, looking up at her with a sleepy smile. “Evening,” he says.

“Hey,” Astrid replies. She leans down to kiss him on the cheek, and he hums happily, taking her hand as she straightens back up. “Are you going home soon?” 

He makes a distinctly less happy sound in the back of his throat, and she giggles. “Wasn’t planning to,” he says. “I’ve still got a lot of work to do, and I just—wanted to rest my eyes a bit—” He breaks off into a mighty yawn, finally sitting up in his chair and stretching before he takes her hand once more.

“Uh-huh,” Astrid says skeptically. “When was the last time you slept not sitting at your desk?”

His brow wrinkles. “Not sure.” Astrid sighs, and he protests, “I’m just getting ready for the winter, you know how it is.”

“Right,” Astrid says. “Because there’s no one else on Berk who can help with winterizing the stables.” All the same, she can feel her face softening, and she smiles back when Hiccup gives her a rueful grin. “Anything I can help with?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Hiccup says, letting go of her hand so he can rub at his face. “There’s honestly not much else I can do tonight, realistically. I might just nap for a few hours.”

“You really don’t want to go home, huh?”

“It’s just too far to walk,” he says, but after a moment of her flat stare, he relents. “Dad’s been dropping hints again.”

“What kind of hints?” 

He takes her hand again. “You know what kind.”

“Oh.” Her belly twists. “Babe, I don’t think—”

“I know,” he says softly, meeting her gaze. “I don’t want to rush it either.”

“We’re _nineteen.”_

Hiccup sighs. “That’s what I told him. But he says that’s how old my mom was when they got married, so…” He shrugs. “And, I mean, it’s not like I’ll have a hard time finding a warm place to sleep in here. Right, bud?” 

Toothless grumbles agreeably. 

Astrid supposes he has a point—it’s hard to imagine a warmer place than amongst hundreds of sleeping dragons. And she knows very well it’s far from the first time he’s slept curled up with Toothless—even on nights when he sleeps in his own bed, Toothless is at most a few feet away. 

“You should join us,” Hiccup says.

“What?” Laughing, Astrid glances around. They’re in a fairly secluded corner, but even so…

“No funny business,” he promises, one side of his mouth tilting up in a crooked smile. “I honestly just want to sleep. And Stormfly’s already conked out with the rest of the Nadders, right?” Astrid nods. “Do you really want to walk back out in the snow?”

Astrid rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling too. It’s been far too long since she’s slept in Hiccup’s arms—here on Berk, there’s some allowance since they’re betrothed, but it’s still nothing like the freedom they had on the Edge. And she really doesn’t want to walk home in the snowstorm she has no doubt has only gotten heavier over the several hours she’s been inside the hangar.

“Fine,” she says, and Hiccup’s grin widens. They settle onto the floor with Astrid’s head on Hiccup’s shoulder and her arm around his waist, her hand brushing the slightly rough warmth of Toothless’ side as they all snuggle closer together. Hiccup spreads the blanket over himself and Astrid, and a moment later darkness settles over them as Toothless covers them with his wing. It’s been a long day, and it doesn’t take long for the warmth and the darkness to make Astrid’s eyes start drooping. She can hear Hiccup’s steady breathing, can feel his chest rising and falling beneath her, and just beyond him, she can hear Toothless’ deep, slow breath as well.

“Hey babe?” she murmurs just as she feels herself beginning to slide toward sleep.

“Yeah?”

“We should bring down some furs or blankets or something, to make it a little more comfortable when you end up falling asleep here.”

Hiccup chuckles, pressing a kiss to her forehead. “I like that idea.”

As Astrid’s eyes slip shut, there’s a soft smile on her lips.

* * *

It’s a few months after that that his father dies and his mother comes back, seemingly from the dead.

At first, Astrid’s not sure what to make of Valka. She soon decides, though, that the degree to which she so obviously cares about Hiccup says a lot, as does the fact that she just has a _way_ with the dragons they liberated from Drago’s dragon army. It’s amazing to watch her working with them, with all the finesse and expertise of having spent twenty years rescuing dragons from similar situations, and even Hiccup learns a few things. Astrid never expected to see what it was like when a dragon had a night terror, though of course it can only be expected after everything these dragons have been through. Valka is just incredible with them. She always seems to know how to calm them on a level that, if it isn’t just pure instinct, is close enough. Astrid quickly loses count of the number of times she rounds a corner in the hangar to find Valka sitting there with a dragon, the two of them breathing together until the dragon calms and its eyes lose that petrified edge that comes on with the nightmares.

And then there’s Eret—Eret, with whom Astrid has the strange bond of having moved very quickly from taking turns being each other’s hostages to battle-forged friendship, as well as the rather less strange but more amusing bond of having caught him checking out her betrothed on more than one occasion. When this happens, and he notices that she’s spotted him, he doesn’t blush or duck his head. Rather, he only shrugs, and Astrid answers his smirk with a grin of her own.

After all, it’s not like she can blame him.

Hiccup doesn’t seem to have noticed. 

She’s seen Eret’s eyes following Valka too. At first, she thinks it’s all just to do with dragons—after all, having been entrusted with the care of Skullcrusher, he has a lot to learn about treating dragons as something more than just goods to be traded. And perhaps that’s how it starts; he quickly takes to trailing after Valka while she does her rounds, helping where he can and listening to her explanations where he can’t. But soon his eagerness to learn grows into something else. The dragons haven’t lost their importance to him, Astrid doesn’t think—far from it, he gets more devoted to their care by the day—but before long he seems interested in Valka for her own sake too. When Astrid and Hiccup are able to join Valka on one of the several flights she takes each day with the new additions to Berk’s dragons, which isn’t as often as either of them would like, it’s a thing of wonder to see the admiration, bordering on awe, that spreads across Eret’s face when he watches Valka on Cloudjumper. 

Astrid thinks Hiccup might have noticed that, but he hasn’t said anything.

And he certainly hasn’t commented on the way that same slightly dazed look sneaks onto Eret’s face when he thinks no one is looking, gazing after Valka’s long legs and trim waist. She’s not any less graceful on solid ground than in the air, and Eret’s amber eyes catch every swing of her long braids, lighting up in a way that’s hard for Astrid to look away from. 

(She’s not jealous of Eret’s attentions—far from it. Even with how busy Hiccup has been since his forced ascension to Chiefhood, he’s made a point to remind her of his affections whenever his schedule allows. And, on occasion, even when it doesn’t. But that doesn’t mean it’s not fun to watch.)

For her part, Valka is wary at first, mistrusting Eret’s intentions as they all did on first meeting him. But between the curiosity and enthusiasm in his eyes and the patience of his hands, it doesn’t take too long for him to sway her. One day, as Astrid and Hiccup are sitting waxing their saddles in the hangar, they hear a laugh ring out. It’s Valka, laughing in a way Astrid didn’t think _anyone_ but Hiccup could make her laugh. As she comes into view, still grinning, Astrid sees Eret at her elbow, as he almost always is these days, looking very pleased with himself.

Hiccup glances over at Astrid, a question written clearly across his face— _what’s that about?_ —but Astrid can only shrug, trying to suppress a grin. He smiles at the expression on her face, giving a good-natured shrug of his own.

As winter begins to settle over Berk, nary a night goes by without a blizzard blanketing the houses in a thick layer of snow. It is with no less frequency that Astrid nearly runs headlong into Valka as one or the other of them is turning a corner in the stables, late at night when most of the village is already in bed. They exchange nods and tired smiles, occasionally comparing notes on tricky cases, and time and time again Valka deftly suggests things Astrid never would have thought of like it’s second nature to her, as though they’re the most obvious possible solutions. And her ideas _work,_ almost without fail, and on the rare occasion that one doesn’t, she has ideas to fall back on. Valka is so like her son, too—it’s like working with Hiccup if he had another decade and a half of expertise, and when the two of them work _together,_ it’s like nothing Astrid’s ever seen.

By now, the little pile of furs and blankets Astrid suggested last year has grown to take up a back corner of the mothers-and-babies wing of the stables, which is where most of the overnight work happens. Hiccup stays there more often than Astrid does; since his father died, she doesn’t think Hiccup has slept in what is now his house more than one night in three. Before, when he slept in the stables, it was to avoid Stoick and all the conversations Hiccup wasn’t ready for; now, though, it’s almost like he’s avoiding his father’s absence, the silence that hangs in the house without Stoick’s loud, laughing voice to break it. There’s a little bit of guilt there too, which he doesn’t deserve, but, as Astrid keeps reminding herself, everyone grieves in their own way. He still manages to be the kind of present, attentive Chief Berk needs right now, commuting from the hangar and heading up to the surface early enough that most people probably don’t even realize he’s not sleeping in the village proper. Astrid can see it’s wearing on him, though. She’s glad he has this place for when he needs it. And, of course, that Toothless is always by his side.

Late one night, long after she’s banished Hiccup to their little nest—he was reluctant to go, but he also hadn’t slept in two days, and he was out almost before his head sank into the plush, soft bedding—Astrid comes across Eret winding his way through the crates stacked in the lower part of the hangar, a blanket folded over one arm. He looks tired, which is more than fair; the past several days really have been quite difficult, with most of the dragons preparing to go to the Rookery in a few days. Even Skullcrusher has been making overtures to a pretty lady Rumblehorn. Presumably, that’s not something Eret has really had to deal with before now. 

“Settling in for the night?” she asks, even though it’s obvious that’s exactly what he’s doing, despite the fact that he has his own little hut not far from Hiccup’s. 

He nods. “Just taking this back to Valka. She fell asleep making notes on that blind Hobblegrunt that came from her old place.” It had been part of Drago’s compelled invasion force, and Astrid can still remember the tears of utter relief Valka shed upon finding it among the others, perfectly safe and well. 

“You know,” she says thoughtfully, “Hiccup and I have a little corner she’s welcome to join us in. You both are.”

“I thought that spot was just for the two of you.”

Astrid shrugs. “It doesn’t have to be. There’s plenty of space. And Toothless is there whenever Hiccup is.”

After a moment, Eret nods. “All right. I’ll talk to her about it.”

This happens completely independently of—and a few weeks after—the night when Astrid wakes to Hiccup and his mother talking in low murmurs. 

“You’re sure you don’t mind?” Valka says.

“Completely. I wouldn’t have offered if I did.”

“And Astrid—”

“Come on, Mom. You’re practically dead on your feet. Let’s just get some rest. I promise Astrid doesn’t mind either.”

Astrid, who has remained very still in order to not tip them off to the fact that she’s awake, does not, in fact, mind. She listens distantly, already starting to go back to sleep, as Hiccup and Valka crawl in next to her, bundling themselves down into the soft warmth of the blankets. 

An arm wraps around her waist, and Hiccup presses a kiss just behind her ear. “Thank you,” he whispers, his voice hardly louder than a breath. Astrid stiffens slightly—she didn’t think he’d realized she was awake. 

“Did you say something?” Valka asks from his other side. She already sounds half-asleep.

“No, just getting comfy.”

“Mmm. G’night.”

“Night, Mom.”

It’s not hard to figure out why Hiccup was thanking Astrid for feigning sleep; if Valka had thought she was awake, getting her to stay would have been a lot harder. She’s still learning to trust humans again, after all, and she would have said something about not wanting to impose. And from the deep, resonant way she’s breathing, she needs the rest. Astrid snuggles against Hiccup by way of response, and his arm tightens around her as he buries his face in the back of her braid. Toothless carefully crawls across the three sets of feet to his spot next to the wall, and before long all of them have drifted off. 

The conversation with Eret, though, seems to demonstrate that despite Hiccup’s best efforts, Valka has decided that joining them is in fact an imposition. It’s not, of course, but there’s really no way to get her to stay in their corner if she doesn’t want to. No matter how much Hiccup wants to make her feel welcome. There’s a little bit of guilt there too, Astrid thinks, though privately she doesn’t know how much of it is warranted in Valka’s case either.

It’s a bit of a quandary, one that neither she nor Hiccup is sure how to solve.

It’s Eret, of all people, who fixes it. It’s the night before the dragons leave for the Rookery, and everyone on Berk, humans and dragons alike, is fit to bursting with nerves and excitement. In his efforts to maintain some semblance of order, Hiccup has been running around the island, from hangar to village and back again, trying to calm down those who are anxious about being separated from their dragons, some for the first time, as well as making sure those dragons don’t burn anything down. By the time he finds Astrid sitting at a desk just outside their little corner-nest, working on a register of all the tracker-class dragons they’re expecting to make the journey—there are three new Nadders going, and Stormfly is going with them for the first time in several years—he’s almost staggering from exhaustion. He kisses her, mumbles something about heading up to the house in case anyone needs him, and then collapses in a distinctly undignified sprawl on top of the furs.

When Eret walks up a little while later, Astrid is still working, though she has her chin propped on one hand. She looks up at him as he approaches. He’s tired too, even more so than he was the other night, his amber eyes slightly dull. 

“I was just looking for Hiccup,” he says. 

Astrid gestures at Hiccup, just slightly out of Eret’s view behind a corner. “And there he lies.”

Eret comes over to her and looks down at the Chief. He’s lying on his back, his tunic riding up a little to expose the pale skin of his stomach and a trail of red-brown hair that disappears into the front of his leather pants. His arm is outstretched with his hand resting on Toothless’ side, which is steadily rising and falling, and his head is turned toward the light of Astrid’s candles with his mouth hanging slightly ajar. Young as he is, he looks younger still in sleep.

“Well, then,” Eret says, and crawls in next to him. 

Astrid keeps working, her candle burning itself slowly down as the night wears on. She gets only the tiniest warning at the sound of a light step behind her, though she still jumps when Valka says, “Well, isn’t that a sight.”

“Hmm?” Blinking heavily, Astrid turns her head to see what Valka means. 

In the intervening time, Hiccup has rolled over, no doubt drawn in by Eret’s warmth, and is now lying with his head nestled on the other man’s shoulder, tucked neatly under Eret’s chin as they snore lightly. The arm that had been stretched out to Toothless is now thrown carelessly across Eret, the hand in a loose fist on his chest, just over the brand Astrid remembers seeing the first time they met Eret. One of Eret’s hands is visible on Hiccup’s side, where it appears he’s wrapped his arm around the younger man. Toothless, for his part, has snuggled closer, and the end of his tail rests on the lower part of Hiccup’s legs.

“Do you think either of them realizes?” Valka asks, amusement evident in her melodic voice.

Astrid chuckles. “Hard to say.” 

“I was planning on getting some rest as well, and I suppose I may as well curl up back here.” Valka is guarded, private, and Astrid frankly doesn’t know if she and Eret have shared a bed before, in any sense. But it still sounds a little falsely casual as Valka asks, “Coming?”

“In a bit,” Astrid says. “I just need to finish up…” As she turns back to her ledger, though, she finds that the numbers are starting to swim in their columns, the different names of the dragons blurring together as her over-tired eyes struggle to focus.

“What you need is some sleep,” Valka says, laying a hand on Astrid’s shoulder. “You’ve prepared as much as you can, and the work will still be there in the morning.” She’s right about that—there’s never a shortage of work. “Come on,” she says briskly. “Back-to-back?”

It’s that or crawl across Hiccup and Eret and risk waking them, Astrid figures. And that is not a risk she wants to take. There’s something oddly endearing about the two of them tangled together in that relaxed state, and she’d hate to disturb their rest. So she nods after a moment, standing and blowing out her candle. 

That is the first night that all four of them (well, five, counting Toothless—the other dragons are all too big to fit) sleep in the nest together, but it’s far from the last. One would think there’s not a lot of work to do in the stables, what with most of the dragons gone, but somehow Hiccup and Valka manage to keep themselves plenty busy that first full day. To be fair, so do Eret and Astrid. They exchange a look as night begins to fall with no sign of Hiccup and Valka wrapping up what they’re doing, wearing matching expressions of good-natured resignation. It would appear they’re staying the night again.

And indeed they do. Toothless, unable to make the trip to the Rookery even if he had a mate to make it with, takes his usual spot by the wall. Hiccup slides in next, followed by Astrid, and then Eret and Valka. They are warm, the blankets are soft, and it doesn’t take long for them all to drop off.

They spend the next couple of days in the village, celebrating Snoggletog. There are snowball fights and too many tankards of mead—and, in Astrid’s opinion, not enough tankards of yaknog—and plenty of festivities for Hiccup to oversee. Eret teaches the Berkians a dance of his people, which Hiccup takes to with an ease that surprises frankly _everyone,_ and spends the better part of an hour next to the fire, regaling seemingly half the children of Berk with stories that have traveled hundreds of miles, just as Eret has, to reach their ears. Their wide, enraptured eyes never leave his face.

Nor, for that matter, do Valka’s. She sits across from Astrid, her mug of mead held in both hands with the rim pressed against her bottom lip.

When they return to the stables to prepare for the dragons’ return, they are not alone. The other Riders come to help, as do a good many villagers, and for once Snotlout and the twins don’t cause too much mayhem, eager as they are to see their dragons again. Astrid also has a sneaking suspicion that they are so subdued in part because Snoggletog is so recent—specifically, that it has something to do with recovering from all the mead they drank. This theory is galvanized by the way Snotlout winces as Hiccup barks instructions just a _little_ too close to Snotlout’s head, which is no doubt pounding.

Astrid doesn’t envy him.

A few days pass, and the dragons come back, babies in tow. Naturally, everyone in the village wants to see them, and just keeping everyone safe and un-crowded takes all their time and attention for several days while people try to steal glances, craning their necks and sneaking into the hangar through back ways that _surely_ Hiccup doesn’t know about.

(He knows about them.)

Eventually, though, they stop, and Hiccup and Astrid are able to stop diverting them—Hiccup pleasantly, Astrid rather less so. Valka has been helping the new parents, expertly unobtrusive, with Eret at her elbow.

By the time the four of them are alone in the hangar again, they’re exhausted, and it is the simplest thing in the world for them to fall back into their pile of furs and blankets, falling asleep with the soft sounds of slumbering dragons all around them. They take it in turns to get up to help any of the mothers who may need assistance, the new mothers especially. As they have since they met her, Hiccup and Astrid learn immeasurably from Valka, as does Eret. The dragons can handle themselves for the most part, and there is a very strong tradition of the older dragons helping the younger, less experienced ones, but an extra pair of hands never hurts, especially when they’re as knowledgeable as Valka’s. 

Before long, spending nights in the hangar turns into a warm, comfortable sort of habit for all of them, curled up in various arrangements in their little corner. It’s no longer just about not wanting to walk home in the snow or finding a place to rest when they’re dead on their feet; no, they like it for its own sake, for the simple pleasure of going to sleep in a warm pile and waking up tangled up with each other. 

That said, the first time Astrid wakes up with Eret’s hand on her waist, the palm wider and the fingers thicker than Hiccup’s, she panics for a moment before she remembers where she is—specifically, back-to-back with Valka. Eret, in throwing his arm across Valka, appears to have overshot a little. As Astrid is twisting to look over her shoulder at the pair of them, she sees Hiccup sidling into the alcove where they’ve made their nest. His eyes go to Eret’s hand on her waist, and he raises one eyebrow. He holds a finger to his lips, a silent request to keep quiet. This does not have the intended effect—instead, Astrid is suddenly having to fight back giggles, covering her mouth with one hand as Hiccup carefully picks his way across his mother’s and Eret’s legs. Eret grunts slightly in response to her movement and pulls back a little so that his hand slips off her waist. Settling down next to her, Hiccup rolls his eyes. This just makes Astrid giggle more, and is it any wonder, tired as he is, that this sets Hiccup off too?

They try and fail to contain their laughter, mostly silent but both of them shaking with it. Every time one of them gets close to calming down, they look at the other and it all starts again. Then Valka’s voice floats out of the darkness directly behind Astrid, half-asleep and grouchy: “If you two don’t knock it off, I’m kicking you out of the nest.”

Somehow, despite the fact that she’s never done so before, they both know that this is not an idle threat. They manage to settle down with Hiccup facing Astrid so that one of his arms is resting on her waist. His hand, she knows, is touching both Eret’s hand and his mother’s back.

They fall asleep quickly in the warm, quiet darkness.

Another night, it is Astrid’s turn to wake to the sounds of giggles. It’s a rare occasion where she is lying between Hiccup and Toothless, warm, solid bodies on either side of her with Toothless by the back wall of the nest. Hiccup is still asleep, eyes shut and hair falling across his face.

It takes her a second to wake up enough to place the voices—but no, it’s definitely Valka and Eret. Eret is speaking in a low rumble, too quiet for her to make out words. His voice turns up in a question, though, and Valka chuckles before answering. It makes Astrid smile slightly in the darkness—Valka, the mother of the Chief whose son is old enough to be betrothed himself, is sitting and giggling like a girl less than half her age. It’s a far cry from her usual demeanor as a slightly-less-feral dragon lady, and Astrid finds herself glad that Valka has found someone to be like that around. She can just picture the two of them, sitting on the floor with their backs to the wall just around the corner, Valka no doubt tucking a strand of hair behind her ear as Eret tracks the movement of her hand.

Then another sound comes from their direction, a very distinct sound, and despite the fact that she’s been watching Eret’s eyes follow Valka and Valka’s eyes follow Eret for months now, it surprises her. 

They’re kissing. 

She starts to sit up, but is surprised further by a hand gripping her shoulder and pressing her back down into the nest. Looking into Hiccup’s face, she can just see that his eyes are open and clear, with none of the bleariness of sleep. Clearly, he’s been awake longer than he’s been letting on. 

Astrid draws her brows together, her eyes darting over his shoulder toward where, yes, his mother and Eret are still kissing, before they meet his again, asking a silent question— _Aren’t you going to say anything?_

Hiccup turns his head very slightly as though peering toward them, then meets Astrid’s gaze again, furrowing his own brow. He shrugs as well as he can while lying on one shoulder. _What am I gonna say? It’s not like it’s any of my business._

The thing is, technically speaking, it is very much Hiccup’s business. If Valka remarries, she will need the Chief’s consent to do so, as any marriage she enters into will have significant political power. And if she has a child—which Astrid doesn’t think she can anymore, but it’s not like they’ve _talked_ about that—that would make things even more complicated. 

She’s trying to figure out how to communicate all that through facial expressions and subtle gestures when Hiccup’s hand rubs along her upper arm, the calluses on his palm rough against her skin. Looking into his face, she sees that he knows all that as well as she does—of course he knows that—and after a second he raises his eyebrows. _Please?_

A moment passes, and Astrid nods. Hiccup relaxes visibly. He smiles at her, stroking her arm again. But then his brow furrows again as he peers out the corner of his eye toward where his mother and Eret are sitting. Astrid barely keeps from snorting at the look on his face as another noise comes through the darkness: a moan, deep in someone’s throat. It’s quiet enough that she’s not quite sure whose. 

Hiccup meets her eyes again, his own eyes slightly wide with what she thinks might be panic, and then he’s twisting in the furs, making rather more noise than he really needs to and settling back down with an exaggerated grunt. He and Astrid stare at one another, holding their breath.

Silence—not even breathing from the others. Astrid wouldn’t be surprised if they’re holding their breath too.

Then, slowly, they relax. No one says anything, but Astrid hears barely stifled laughter from Valka and Eret. They get up and disappear deeper into the hangar, their footsteps fading into silence. 

Astrid looks at Hiccup again. His eyes are shut, though she can tell he’s not asleep. It would seem he doesn’t want to talk about it.

But then, Astrid reasons, she probably wouldn’t want to either.

She does wonder, at times, why it’s the four of them, eventually coming to the conclusion that it’s because they have so few other connections in the village. Whatever friendships Valka had when she lived here before, they died at the same time everyone on Berk thought she did. Her parents died while she was away too—out of grief, everyone said at the time, though now they lean heavily on the narrative of _their hearts just gave out_ —which also led to Stoick being Hiccup’s only close family, Stoick’s parents having died long ago. And until five years ago, Hiccup was more or less anathema, his transformation into the “pride of Berk” not quite enough to dislodge that learned isolation. Eret, for his part, left his family behind the moment he defected from Drago’s army, so quickly that Astrid has to wonder if he’s really processed that. Though they’ve adjusted to the changes in recent years, and they were more than happy to come up with the (very reasonable) dowry needed for her to marry the Chief’s son, Astrid doesn’t think her own family has quite forgiven dragons for what happened to her uncle Finn. To be fair, she knows she wouldn’t have herself, were it not for Stormfly. The other Riders don’t _need_ this connection the same way the four of them do: Ruffnut and Tuffnut have not only each other, but an entire, expansive family; Snotlout has the Jorgensons to prove himself to; and Fishlegs has enough nieces and nephews to constitute a clan all on their own. While they’re all welcome, and they all know they’re welcome, the vast majority of the time it’s just the four of them.

Which Astrid doesn’t mind one bit.

Winter begins to melt, though as always it holds on with both hands for as long as it can. As spring slowly forces its way up through the ground and the baby dragons start to grow up, there is less work in the stables that requires twenty-four-hour supervision. Which means fewer excuses for staying the night. They don’t need the excuses as much though either, not anymore. Hiccup is getting more comfortable settling into his role as Chief, as well as sleeping in the Chief’s house. Valka has begun tentatively re-establishing her old friendships, as well as proving that Hiccup can depend on her advice with villagers as much as with dragons. It’s really the least Astrid can do to help Eret continue ingratiating himself to the people of Berk, especially the Berk Guard, between her own duties as Hiccup’s right-hand Viking. Slowly, their little nest sees less and less use, though Astrid knows none of them would be able to adjust the way they are now without that time together.

Still, as spring turns into summer, they fall into a happy routine. Despite the pressures of marriage that are still coming from the village—Astrid is more grateful than she can say that, in all the advice Valka has given Hiccup, she’s never once talked to him about marrying Astrid unless he asked her about it first—and the fact that there always seems to be more dragons to free, Astrid finds herself content.

Until, of course, everything changes.

Again.

* * *

There is a hangar on New Berk. 

Or, at least, the beginnings of one. The villagers started building it in the day or so after they arrived, when Hiccup and Astrid and Valka and Eret and the other Dragon Riders were busy trying to chase down Grimmel and then finding the Hidden World. They’d thought that, wide and grand as the island was, it wasn’t quite safe to let the dragons roam free just yet in this unknown place. 

It was a good thought. 

Now the hangar has been standing half-built and empty for months. No one has quite had the heart to pull it down, and Hiccup has certainly not had the heart to order them to, but the cold hard truth is that they still have plenty of buildings left to construct, and they need the wood. It is Valka who first comes up with an idea for how to use the wood so it doesn’t go to waste. Hiccup is eager to embrace the idea, and so it is quickly decided that the timbers previously intended for the stables will go to building the Chief’s house, where Hiccup and Astrid will live once it is completed. Hiccup has been putting it off, ostensibly wanting to get everyone else settled and stable before he starts on the kind of big, showy house he’s got planned for them. Part of Astrid wonders, though, whether—and how much—it has to do with him not wanting to plan a place to live without Toothless. It’s evident that his dragon’s absence is still agonizing to him, an empty spot in his heart that Astrid can never and will never fill.

She understands this, though. Of course she does. She has just such a spot inside her own heart. 

The pointed arch of the hangar opening, which the timbers had already been formed into, will still be visible in the Chief’s house. The plans for the main room have quickly been altered to show this, Hiccup’s pencil skimming over the paper with an enthusiasm—a fervor, almost—that Astrid hasn’t seen since the days of them mapping the world together.

Not that they got very far. 

The project is starting tomorrow. The plans have been finalized, the men are ready to go, and the dragons’ home will be repurposed into one for Astrid and Hiccup, and their children, and however many generations of Haddock Chiefs will use it. Astrid thinks Hiccup likes this, though he hasn’t said so outright—if these materials cannot be used for their original intent, at the very least they will be part of a place for people who love dragons, a remembrance of what Berk has lost being used to hold what it has yet to gain. Astrid certainly likes it. It seems fitting.

Tonight, the last night the hangar will be standing, the four of them are staying the night there together for old times’ sake. It is almost winter, with every passing day bringing the snow nearer and soaking the autumn chill deeper into their bones. The wind has grown sharp in recent weeks, and the window they have in which to do work on the village is rapidly shrinking.

So it has to be tonight.

They’ve gathered in the shadow of the hangar’s entrance. They don’t have their old nest, so they’ve brought blankets and started a small fire, and they sit around it, passing around a jar of mead as the light slowly fades. Valka and Eret are sitting close together, though if anything has happened between them since that night in the hangar, Astrid hasn’t seen them, and they haven’t come to talk to Hiccup about it. He hasn’t brought it up either. They don’t speak much, but then they don’t need to. They all know what the others are thinking about—dragons, the rush of wind, the driving force of wings and the thrill of flight. 

It’s beyond words, but they all understand it. 

And Astrid knows that, with the wedding planned a few weeks from now and the places Valka and Eret have made for themselves in the months since they’ve come to New Berk, they will find a way to live despite the hole in their lives the dragons have left. They are far from alone, and whatever happens, they will always have a home with each other.

They can always make another nest.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, hope you liked it!


End file.
